Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy

I am a champion procrastinator. I try not to be, but every time I try to push through the procrastination, my lazy level goes unsustainably low, and I have to top it up. I am afraid of failing, and so I am afraid of trying.

I used to be so enthusiastic about life. I thought it was a wonderful thing to be able to do anything. Then I started imposing restrictions on myself. Now I have qualifications that are virtually useless, an unfulfilling job and no career. I am fractious, humourless and unlikable because I am so dissatisfied. It saddens me to see myself sabotaging opportunities and then fretting at the results. I need to find a path.

I am not alone in this. When I went to University I followed my heart, and not my head. I studied something I love, have always loved, and hope to love forever. Many people did just as I did. Then some of us made bad choices. Instead of researching where I would go next, I decided I needed a break (I needed a smack of reality, I thought the "real world" would give me just that) and took a job that I dislike where I feel utterly useless and unfulfilled. My job doesn't make an impact - on my colleagues, or on the wider world. I know many people have to sacrifice their ideals as they mature, but usually there is a trade off, a pay out - the end justifies the means.

I now need to go back and start afresh. I have started indulging the parts of myself that I feared - my writing most of all. I fear it because I love it, and I don't think it will pass muster under close examination. I fear it because it is something I really, truly do not want to fail at. I am trying again - not hard enough, but I am working on it - because it is worth doing. I have never finished a story I have written. I have never completed something I believed was worth completing because if it remained incomplete then it was unfinished, and so couldn't be judged. I think it's time to grow up and begin finishing what I start.